


Gamesmanship

by icarus_chained



Series: Nigel and Nikola [1]
Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Historical, Xenophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-23
Updated: 2012-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-05 21:36:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1886. The first time Nigel hears about Edison's 'little joke'. Nigel & Nikola, some hints at John/James, maybe.</p><p>Part one of a series, Nigel and Nikola through the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gamesmanship

**Author's Note:**

> Just for the record? Edison was a _bastard_. Or, possibly, just a very ruthless businessman, and a case of unreliable narrator, but judging by the man's business practices ...

Nikola always fought back.

Nigel liked that about him. Always had. Admittedly, 'always' here only covered the few of months since they made each other's acquaintance, so perhaps wasn't worth all that much, but considering what had happened in those months, all that they'd done ...

Nikola fought back when you needled him. Not like James, who past a certain point just got brittle and cold and dignified, leaving you feeling the worst kind of scum as he walked stiffly away. Not like John, who past a certain point just kicked your arse up between your ears for you, and had done (and, too, would do the same for James, once the man was safely out of earshot - it didn't pay to mess with either of them). And not like Helen, with whom fighting on any level was not to be thought of, or all four of them would land on you, and her in the lead.

But Nikola ... Nikola fought you back in kind. Every time. A shot across his bows got you a shot in the engine room back. A quip in his ear got you a smirk and a smug, neat little put-down without him ever raising his head from what he was doing. An argument with him could go all night, and never get past needling, childish slurs, while he grinned and raised that cocky little eyebrow of his. Nigel could open fire whenever he pleased, and be sure to get lazy, confident rebuttals right on back, until one or other of them had to concede with a smile, or Helen told them to be _quiet_ already.

Fighting with Nikola was _fun_ , in short. Whether just between themselves, or on those increasingly rare occasions when some other arrogant snot picked a fight with one or other of them (mostly Nikola - you'd think people would learn), and they could casually bat the interloper's ego between them until whoever it was left with their tail between their legs. A wholly childish pastime, but then, there were times they were wholly childish men. Or Nikola was, at least. Catch him admitting different, would you?

Point of it was, Nikola always fought back. Nikola never let anything more than skim his nerves before he shot it down with a grin. You could argue the man to a standstill every night for a week, and he'd never lose that smug, confident little smirk, the occasional brief flares of temper aside.

So Nigel had absolutely no idea what had just gone wrong. He'd absolutely no idea what the hell had just happened. 

One minute, they're casually letting fire back and forth over one of Nikola's new engines, the Serb with his head stuck inside the thing and paying Nigel about as much mind as he gave the sparks flying around his hands, John sticking his oar in every so often just to be annoying, and then ... 

Then Nikola'd jerked upright. Then he'd stared at Nigel, shocked and bewildered, searching Nigel's face for something ... Nigel, still caught in the game, had simply stared smugly back, trying not to show his confusion, and Nikola ... Had frozen. Had gone as stiff and brittle and hard as James at his worst, gone as pale as Death with fury, and then ... Simply left. Simply stalked out, not a hard, glittering word to any of them, not one expansive gesture of temper. Nikola had walked out, his machine sparking fitfully behind him, and left Nigel staring after him, as stunned as the rest of them. 

And for the life of him, Nigel had no idea why.

But he was going to find out. Oh, he was going to find out. And not just because Helen had glared at him as if she was two seconds from finding something big and deadly and not the first bit real to feed him to. Not just because James had looked after Nikola with something close to sympathy on his face, and turned to glare at Nigel reproachfully in that stiff, careful way of his.

He was going to find out because the only reason he'd kept playing this game had been because Nikola wasn't hurt by it. Because the aim had never been to actually _hurt_ the stupid bugger. It was fun, yes, and it had been an awful long time since Nigel'd had anyone willing to match him word for word at it, but the first sign that it was hurting the testy foreigner and he'd have stopped, the way he had for James. He may be an arrogant, hard-spoken sod, but he wasn't _cruel_. He valued his friends a bit more highly than _that_.

He found Nikola by the old stand-by of heading for the nearest stash of wine they had on campus. He figured, not incorrectly as it turned out, that a genuinely hurt Nikola would head for something to drown his pain. In some ways, he and James were shockingly alike, though Nikola had yet to show signs of leaning towards James' mind-altering comfort of choice. Off his gourd, but probably not out of his head. But still. Quite like James at times, with that sometimes-fragile pride, and Nigel could kick himself for not noting that sooner. Before he'd opened his sodding mouth, for example ...

He found Nikola perched on a windowsill overlooking the quad, a bottle of wine tucked between his knees, one hand clenched around it in white fury as he heard Nigel approach. The man didn't look around, forehead pressed to the glass, and from what Nigel could see of his reflection, eyes screwed shut.

"Not now, Helen," Nikola growled, hugging the bottle to him protectively as if he thought someone was going to steal it from him. "I'll apologise for upsetting people _later_. Just let me ..."

"I don't think it's you Helen wants to apologise," Nigel said softly, and watched as Nikola startled upright, watched as the man turned to him with the same hard, defiant expression Nigel sometimes saw pointed at John, when Helen wasn't around to frown at them for their silent rivalry. Nigel watched that expression turn his way for one joke, when a thousand hadn't budged the light, tempestuous humour of the man, and yet again cursed himself for ever opening his mouth. But he still didn't understand.

"Well, I'll tell her you were by, then," Nikola offered, hard and cold. None of the fire and gesticulating of his usual temper, none of heat-flash-and-gone of even those times when it had been genuine anger and not a game. Because it wasn't anger Nigel was seeing, here. 

It was hurt.

"That's not how this works," he said, quietly, moving cautiously over to lean against the wall beside Nikola's alcove and watch him carefully. "When friends hurt each other, what happens is the one who did the hurting comes and says he's sorry, and asks what he can do to redeem himself." He tried a small smile. "Even if he doesn't quite understand what he did wrong ...?"

Nikola looked away again, expression still tight and defiant, and now with just a hint of something that looked like shame. "It's nothing," he muttered, curling himself further into his perch and raising the bottle to his lips, ignoring Nigel utterly once again. Petulant and defiant.

"It's not nothing," Nigel snapped, with a hint of temper of his own, and reached out to tug the bottle down. Not away, mind, because they'd all learned pretty quickly that taking Nikola's alcohol was a sure-fire way to induce a genuine sulk, and Nigel was having enough problems with this conversation as it was. "Nothing is when I call you every dirty name under the sun, and you knock me down a peg or twenty with about two sentances in return, because we've done that a hundred times and it's never ... It's never done this to you. _I've_ never done this to you." 

He stopped with a snarl of frustration, scrubbing a hand through his hair. Nikola was still resolutely ignoring him, which was something Nigel had never, ever seen the man do before, if only because Nikola seemed fundamentally incapable of letting stupidity go without vocally expressing his opinion on it. To see the man silent, to see him still ...

"I'm sorry," he said, blunt and tired and as genuine as he knew how to be. "I figured it was a game, that you gave as you got, and had fun doing it. It wasn't aimed to knock you down. Never was. Never figured you _could_ be knocked down. But it doesn't matter. I'll bloody stop, if that's what's needed. Only bloody _tell_ me, you bastard! Tell me what I did wrong, and I'll bloody fix it!"

Nikola said nothing. Pale and remote, he hugged his bottle to his chest, and said nothing. And after a minute, after waiting a minute ... Nigel gave up. Oh, not for good. Not by a long shot. But he gave up standing there, gave up waiting when the man was still so obviously upset and in no mood to listen to him. He shifted to leave, meaning to come back later, possibly after cornering James and asking how a man apologised for ... for doing whatever put that glassy, breakable look in a man's eyes ... He moved to leave, and Nikola spoke up, quietly, never looking at him.

"The last time someone told me I did not understand their country's humour," he said, accent suddenly very thick, very tired. "They did so after having used me for months on the promise of a future, the promise of enough money to make my own way, that they never intended to give me. Because it turned out that the joke I did not get was myself. My own foolish hope. The humour I did not understand was their laughing at me." He laughed, soft and dark. "My apologies. When you said that ... For a moment, I feared ... Never mind. I'm sure I will understand the joke soon enough."

He looked over then, with a wry, bitter smile tucked in the corner of his mouth, and then blinked at whatever he saw in Nigel's face. Stared, at what Nigel could only guess was the echo of the rage suddenly boiling in his chest, the surge of righteous fury in his gut. Nikola blinked at him.

"That's not a joke," Nigel managed, clipped and tight, feeling his fists knot, as if there were someone to hit. For a moment, he understood that little better the surge of darkness in John's face when James turned brittle and stiff, the urge to pound something that apparently took him over. For a moment, Nigel had every sympathy for the darkness in John. "I would not ... I would _never_ ..."

He wasn't that kind of man. He was _not_ that kind of man, to give his word and break it, only to laugh at someone. To use a friend that way. He was not, nor would he ever be, that kind of man. And there was no apology good enough, if he had made Nikola think he was, and none whatsoever for this person, whoever they were, who taught him to expect it ... Nigel was a decent bloody Englishman, and he kept his bloody word, and right then he was silently promising himself that the first time he met this joker of Nikola's, he was going to take a leaf from John's book, and plant a fist somewhere they'd feel it in the bloody morning.

"I know," Nikola said, watching him with surprised appraisal. With a soft, almost rueful smile, and then the man held out the bottle of wine towards Nigel, a gesture of apology that Nigel didn't quite understand. "I didn't think you would. I was just ... Look, it's only been a year. I get a little ... Look, just forget it, will you? Just forget it, and we'll go back in and have a proper fight, make Helen stop worrying ..." 

He waved his hand, frustration and dismissal, as if he could command the past few minutes to go away by sheer force of will, and it was so _Nikola_ , such a return to his usual tempestuous arrogance, that Nigel accepted the wine in sheer relief. Took it in the spirit it was offered, and watched the breakable thing in Nikola's eyes fade a bit above his grin.

"Not on your life," Nigel shot back, just to test the ground. "If I so much as look at you wrong for the next few days, she'll skin me and feed the remains to something with far more teeth than any real animal ought to have. You can go pick fights with James for a while, mate. I'm waiting until the coast is clear." If it ever was. If Nikola wanted to play the game anymore at all. Nigel could stop if he didn't. He had for James.

But Nikola was grinning at him, now. That smug, taunting smirk, from a man that genuinely couldn't be knocked down, not for long, and it was the light of challenge back in his eyes, the spirit of gamesmanship that Nigel so admired. "Oh?" the scientist drawled, rich and needling. "Afraid of a woman now, are we, Nigel?"

"Not a bit of it," he returned, along with the bottle. "I've an entirely healthy fear of Helen Magnus, which is another thing entirely. And you should talk, or are you going to do your cursing in English any time soon? I may not speak Serbian or Hungarian, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out the meaning of some of those words yesterday ..."

Nikola laughed. "I'll start using colourful language in front of Helen just as soon as you and John do," he said, resting a friendly arm across Nigel's shoulders as they meandered back towards the lab. "James, of course, we shan't speak of, because the day James uses foul language in front of a lady ..."

"Is the day the seas rise and swallow the earth," Nigel nodded, grinning to hide his relief, and feeling something relax inside his chest. Some tight, violent thing that had been ready to lash out, to break some distant someone (and if it was only a year ago, Nigel could already guess who) who had almost cost him a friendship. As they moved back into the lab, back into the circle of the Five, with Nikola grinning entirely unapologetically at Helen as if nothing he did required the slightest explanation, Nigel felt that hard, vicious thing relax.

But not leave. Not quite. Because Nigel was a good, decent Englishman, and he kept his word, and from here-on, he owed some bloody American sod a good strong punch in the gut. And he'd get it, too. One day yet. For Nikola's sake, for the sake of a friend, he'd give Edison what was coming to him, one day yet.

And what's more, he'd bloody enjoy it, too.


End file.
